THE BOOK OF DEUTERONOMY: Chapter 9

Lest they should impute their victories to their own merits, they are put in mind of their manifold rebellions and other sins, for which they should have been destroyed, but God spared them for his promise made to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.

Thou shalt know therefore this day that the Lord thy God himself will pass over before thee, a devouring and consuming fire, to destroy and extirpate and bring them to nothing before thy face quickly, as he hath spoken to thee.

Say not in thy heart, when the Lord thy God shall have destroyed them in thy sight: For my justice hath the Lord brought me in to possess this land, whereas these nations are destroyed for their wickedness.

For it is not for thy justices, and the uprightness of thy heart that thou shalt go in to possess their lands: but because they have done wickedly, they are destroyed at thy coming in: and that the Lord might accomplish his word, which he promised by oath to thy fathers Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.

For in Horeb, also thou didst provoke him, and he was angry, and would have destroyed thee,

nam et in Horeb provocasti eum et iratus delere te voluit

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When I went up into the mount to receive the tables of stone, the tables of the covenant which the Lord made with you: and I continued in the mount forty days and nights, neither eating bread, nor drinking water.

And the Lord gave me two tables of stone written with the finger of God, and containing all the words that he spoke to you in the mount from the midst of the fire, when the people were assembled together.

And said to me: Arise, and go down from hence quickly: for thy people, which thou hast brought out of Egypt, have quickly forsaken the way that thou hast shewn them, and have made to themselves a molten idol.

And your sin that you had committed, that is, the calf, I took, and burned it with fire, and breaking it into pieces, until it was as small as dust, I threw it into the torrent, which cometh down from the mountain.

And when he sent you from Cadesbarne, saying: Go up, and possess the land that I have given you, and you slighted the commandment of the Lord your God, and did not believe him, neither would you hearken to his voice:

Lest perhaps the inhabitants of the land, out of which thou hast brought us, say: The Lord could not bring them into the land that he promised them, and he hated them: therefore he brought them out, that he might kill them in the wilderness,